


adrift in past and future tense

by younglegends



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Future Fic, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: One grey morning a shadow is docked at the Ketterdam harbour.How a story ends, and begins, and is made in between.





	adrift in past and future tense

**Author's Note:**

  * For [impertinence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/impertinence/gifts).



> Hope you have a very happy Yuletide!
> 
> Title is taken from the poem Blue Vase by Cynthia Zarin (thank you, a., for helping me out!).

> That a boat can stall at the edge of the sea, until it is overturned, at last, by what it loves most.
> 
> —CECILA LLOMPART

 

One grey morning a shadow is docked at the Ketterdam harbour.

That is how the story ends.

 

**i.**

 

Kaz Brekker stands on the dock and watches it go, and when he turns back around, his city is waiting for him.

On his way back to the Slat a group of men comes out of the shadows, knives glinting in the sun. It’s broad daylight; Ketterdam is getting bold. Growing teeth. Dirtyhands curls his lips in a humorless grin and puts his gloves back on.

He takes them off again, later, long after night has fallen, and lays them on his desk. He stares at them, and at his hands. Sleep comes uneasy, stirred by restless dreams, the rocking waves of a ship at sea.

In the morning he lasts thirty-two minutes, up until Anika bumps his arm in the hallway and notices. She doesn’t say anything, which in a way is even worse—the bitten back question on her mouth, the lack of recognition in her eyes. When he has turned the corner, he pulls the gloves out of his pocket and puts them back on, and finds no need to remove them for the rest of the day.

The next day, forty-five.

The day after that is better—three and a half hours. He almost makes the entirety of the next day, but then the blood of a man’s throat splashes against his wrist, and the revulsion is so great he almost passes out. He comes back to himself surrounded by the bodies he has left strewn in the grit of the alleyway, a sea of soft flesh, sinking. It’s only luck that he’s alone. That, and a ship that has sailed, days ago, with only days more to come.

He has lost minutes, maybe more, to this stinking alleyway. The city is laughing at him, echoes of merriment from the main road, twinkling lights and sweeping shadows. There is blood on him, on all of him. He wants to cut off his hands. He wants—

He gets back to the Slat without being seen and washes his hands in the sink. The gloves come back on, and the next morning, they don’t come off. There is only more work to be done, after all, now that he is alone again. And there is no reason to think that the story’s over, that there’s time to catch his breath. Talk moves fast as a river through the streets of Ketterdam, and there are always new names whispering itself into life in the crowd, cheap as the dirty coins exchanging themselves over and over through the same hands at the gambling tables. Already the tide rushing in, bringing with it new shadows and strangers creeping into his city, ready to drag him under.

On his way down from the attic, Kaz catches a glimpse out one of the windows. In the early morning light, he can see the crooked face of Ketterdam, waking up. At this hour, one could almost mistake it for peaceful. The shoreline of the harbour is blocked out by buildings, but Kaz knows the direction of where it lies by heart. He casts his gaze to the opposite window instead, straight into the sprawl of the rising sun. Coming up and alive, inch by inexorable inch, brighter than all the rest of it. He does not look away.

 

**ii.**

 

The sea looks calm this morning. Inej Ghafa knows better, by now. She tightens her grip on the railing and peers over the side, but at this height she can’t quite make out her reflection. Only a blur of the water, as though confused about what she should be.

The answers to that question once came easy. In Ravka, Inej was a daughter; in Ketterdam, a shadow. She doesn’t know what she is now, but it’s something bigger than them both. A story, maybe. She can see it in the eyes of the slavers her crew descends upon: recognition not of her face, but her legacy. Her ship on the horizon is more than a warning—it’s a promise, the momentum of which carries her still, through sea and storm and time.

Time, which is the last thing Inej ever expected—how there is still more of it, opening up each day at dawn, moving her on and on through days bleeding into the next without sight of shore. Just like how the rocking of the waves feels like the jostle of the caravan over the dirt roads, when Inej would blink awake from her mother’s lap, and a hand would run gently through her hair. Up out the window, the stars winking at her in the night. Inej has never belonged to any one place, but she’s also never been more unmoored than out here on the open sea. It feels like the space of a fall, suspended in the air, and no safe landing to be found. _Inej,_ her father used to say, _you’re slipping,_ and Inej would straighten up, feet steady on the tightrope. No, she would say. No, I’m not.

“Captain,” says Specht, in greeting. He’s joined her by the railing, peering out over the sea. “Looks like the storm’s over, then.”

“Not for long,” Inej says. “How many days is it to Shriftport?”

Specht smiles. “Two,” he says, and then, after an uncharacteristic pause, “We will pass Kerch, on the way.”

Inej knows this; she has studied the maps pinned up on the walls of her quarters, traced out routes with her knives until she can follow them in her sleep. She knows Specht knows this, too, and that his statement is not a reminder but a question. Inej closes her eyes and sees Ketterdam unfurl before her like a dream. But she is not anyone’s shadow, not anymore, no matter the dreams in which she is no longer mapping out rooftops or sea routes but a body instead, skin trembling under her touch—ones from which she wakes up, and her hands have nothing left to do but clench themselves into fists. It has taken her all this time, but now she casts her own shadow, and her own light, too.

Light, like in the eyes of the girls she returns to the world—most of them don’t choose to stay with her crew, but the ones who do have a sharpness to them she recognizes, or else they just don’t have anywhere else to go, which she also recognizes. How on earth can you ever return to a land that let you be stolen away? It’s part of the reason why she left her parents in West Ravka, but not the only one. No, that would be the fact that they’d been looking for a girl all this time, and Inej is not one, not anymore. They had continued to travel after losing her, in search of her, but now they had no more reason to wander. Now, at last, they could rest, in the small house she’d arranged for them, surrounded by a garden of red-petaled flowers: a memory of love in her mind, one she’d cherished since childhood, but also a farewell to it.

How long has it been, Inej thinks, and finds that she does not know. There is no use for time, here in the wild of the sea. There is no sense of departure, or return; only the endless journey, day upon day. Sun rising up from the blood of the water, pulling her ever forward. She studies her own white-knuckled grip upon the railing. _Inej, you’re slipping._

She straightens up and lets go.

“How many days did you say it was to Shriftport, again?” Inej says. Not a question, but an answer.

“Two,” Specht says, and this time, there is no pause. “But between you and me, Captain—I think we can make it in less.”

Inej smiles. “Good,” she says, facing the morning wind, the chill of it stinging her teeth.

 

**iii.**

 

It lasts until it doesn’t: which is to say, late one evening in the middle of a fight someone slips in close enough to slide a dagger through the small of Kaz Brekker’s back and into the soft gut of his body. A moment later and Kaz’s elbow is whipping back to crush the man’s windpipe, but the damage is done. Even through his gloves he can feel the blood seeping thick and hot through his fingers.

The others are scrambling to help him, grabbing at his arms, but Kaz’s vision swims, resurfaces somewhere in the harbour seeing Jordie’s bloated face. “No,” he grits out, shoving the hands away, “no,” and they are all watching him now. Crows, he knows, are always hungry, especially for the dead. And what a fitting end it would be, not two streets down from where Dirtyhands was born. “The base,” he grunts. Holding in the life of him with his hands. “Back to the base.”

Later, in his own quarters, Kaz places a hand over the mess of bandages, and can feel the pulse of blood underneath. When he pulls away, he leaves a red handprint behind. His gloves are soaked through, and he peels them off, casts them into the sink. In the mirror, a shadow stares back.

It was a small cut, really. Neat and almost merciful. Certainly less than what Dirtyhands deserves, and not ever enough to put him down; in the harsh lamplight he absently wonders why he’d ever thought it possible.

There is blood on him, on all of him. He has always known this. He just hasn’t expected so much of it to be his own.

Out the window, there is a flurry of motion; the thrash of a bird’s wings. Kaz sits down at his desk, careful, careful. His hands are bare. In the lamplight he lets them tremble for a moment, then cuts the movement off again. Reaches out and turns off the lamp.

 

In the years to come Jesper is no longer the scrappy kid Kaz once fished out from the gambling tables. He’s outgrown himself, into a man not unlike his father. Still, once a crow, always a crow. Still an air of hunger about him, though he looks well-fed, well cared for. He wears glasses, now.

“It’s all the reading,” Jesper says with a sigh. “Wylan made me go back to school—of course you know. And there’s the business, of course. But I still run into some poor sap every once in a while who thinks I can’t shoot anymore, thanks to these.” He taps the bridge of his glasses, leans forward like he’s sharing a secret. “Anyone can shoot, you know,” he says. “Not everybody can aim.”

“What business, Fahey?” Kaz says, not looking up from his papers.

“What,” Jesper says. “Can’t come ’round to visit an old friend?”

Kaz has not seen him in some time. Lately the two leaders of the Van Eck empire have taken to travel, for trade meetings and matters of business expansion. Kaz knows their ship returned to the Ketterdam harbour late last night, but he hasn't expected this visit. He frowns at Jesper, who is currently sprawling his legs out, feet resting on Kaz’s desk.

“What business,” Kaz says, and Jesper shrugs.

“Heard you ran into the wrong end of a knife the other night,” Jesper says, and Kaz’s blood runs cold.

“Where did you hear that?” Kaz says. His posture betrays nothing of his bandages, and the few witnesses of the incident should know better than to speak of it. The streets can’t be running free with the knowledge that Dirtyhands bleeds red as the rest of them. Years ago a stunt like that might have worked; he remembers being broken apart and clawing his way back together, back to the top, in the Slat for all to see. But he’s bigger now, and older, and his story is no longer one of succession but of synthesis. The city has already forgotten his rise; all they need to know is that he remains.

“The streets have always talked,” Jesper says. “You know that.”

Kaz folds his hands together. “Yes,” he says pointedly. “I do.”

“I just came to see if it was true,” Jesper says. “And to make sure that the bastard of the Barrel’s still breathing.”

“Looks like you’ve gotten what you came for, then,” Kaz says. “Is this enough of a show? Or shall I perform a few cartwheels for you too?”

Jesper only grins at that, but it’s completely off. Something shuttering behind his eyes. Kaz feels a flash of irritation—not at the look, but at the fact that Jesper is still so easy to read. Like he’s learned nothing. Like he hasn’t had to, in all this time.

“You know, Kaz,” Jesper says. “You really haven’t changed at all.”

Kaz looks at him. _I could say the same for you,_ he thinks, but then again it isn’t true, not really. He can still see the shadow of Jesper’s younger self, the flicker of the fire he’s left behind. But Jesper’s made a different life for himself by now, and he looks comfortable in it. Staring from the other side of the desk like Kaz is the one who’s out of touch with the world, because he’s never seen the truth of what Kaz is, past the spectacle and the story. What’s left of his skin, bleeding out beneath the bandages. Only one person ever has. But from what Kaz hears, she’s more of a story now, too.

“I brought you something,” Jesper says.

“It better be more than just the dirt off your boots,” Kaz says.

“Sure, sure,” Jesper says. Sweeps his arm. A handful of red petals drift down onto Kaz’s desk.

Kaz holds himself in absolute stillness.

“A gift,” Jesper says. The crooked smile is gone.

“You visited, then?” Kaz says.

“Wylan and I,” Jesper says. “Took a few detours on our trip. It wasn’t all business, you know. Wylan likes to sightsee. He paints, sometimes.” He shrugs. “She wasn’t there. Hadn’t been in years. We didn’t really expect her to be, to tell you the truth. It’s not her city. Never was.”

“And Ketterdam is?” Kaz says, a note sharper than he’d intended.

“No,” Jesper says slowly, “but it’s yours. Is it not?”

Kaz eyes the spread of petals on his desk. “Get to the point, Fahey,” he says.

“It’s yours,” Jesper says, gentle beyond all odds, as though he is speaking not to a character nor a crow, but to a man. “All of it is yours. But only for as long as you live.”

Kaz smiles, cold. “You’re right, Fahey,” he says. “But Dirtyhands will live forever.”

“Maybe,” Jesper says. “And what of Kaz Brekker?”

“They’re the same,” Kaz says. He’s bored, by now. But the petals—His hand is almost touching one, and he shifts away. The movement draws Jesper’s gaze.

“Are they,” he says, pointedly eyeing Kaz’s gloves.

Kaz leans back in his chair, amiable as anything. “Get your feet off my desk, Fahey,” he says, “if you’d still like to keep them attached to your body.”

Jesper raises his hands in surrender. Tilts the brim of his hat. Perhaps Kaz has misjudged him; perhaps after all these years Jesper is seeing him clearly. Perhaps he was capable of it all along. And, of course, perhaps that is why he had looked away. “I’ll see you around,” Jesper says. A pause, and then a rueful smile. A real one. “At least, I’d better. Don’t get yourself stabbed again, will you?”

He closes the door on Kaz’s snarl.

Some time later, Kaz removes the glove from his left hand. Picks up one of the petals between thumb and forefinger, and holds it very carefully, so it does not break apart.

 

He’ll never tell the truth of it to anyone, but the reason why the man had the chance to sink his knife into Kaz’s gut is because he’d jostled him, first. Thick weight of a body at his back and Kaz had recoiled not from pain, but from nausea. Vision flashing for just a moment. But just a moment had been enough.

The wound is beginning to heal, now, but Kaz knows better. An infection only ever grows worse, like rot from the inside out. The whisper of what she had been trying to tell him, all those years ago: this was never a solution but a weakness. A foothold, perhaps. An entrance. But one without an exit; one that will only be his undoing, in time. And after how far he’s come, he can’t be defeated by this. He won’t be.

Late one night Kaz stands at the dock. It’s too dark to see the water, but he knows it is there, waiting. In the distance the watchtower stands timelessly still. He stays there for a while, the sea spray awash upon his face, salt on his lips, until he can see before him his brother’s face as it was, not the bulging-eyed corpse he’d left as. It’s a boy’s face, rounded and softened by time. He has been gone for longer than he lived, by now. Kaz lifts his ungloved hand, opens his fist, and lets the fall of flower petals scatter into the wind.

“No mourners,” he says aloud.

No funerals. Just a letting go.

He turns back around. The city stands, a teeming plague of blood and filth, people upon people. The streets where he learned all the ways a body can break. All a body can take. Where he died and survived and must still live on. Must still live long.

Go on and take it, Kaz thinks. Go on and touch. What you’ve made.

The wind flutters like a kiss on his cheek.

 

**iv.**

 

It’s only by chance they meet. _The Wraith_ is docked overnight at Os Kervo, a city Inej can only bear to be in armed with the understanding that she is not the same girl it once let slip away. And with all her knives, of course. They’re only meant to be there until morning at latest, stocking back up on supplies. Inej is tucked away in the bustling crowd of the marketplace, idly examining a display of scarves, when she looks up and catches Nina’s eye. How odd it is to be recognized. She still has a hand on the silk fabric laid out on the vendor’s booth, and in her mind’s eye she remembers the skirts they used to have to wear, so long they trailed against the floor. Swirling around her ankles every time she moved, in so much useless motion.

“You’ve got good taste,” the vendor’s saying, “this colour goes wonderfully with your eyes,” and Inej retracts her hand. Nina, across the crowd, is still watching, as though if she takes her gaze off, Inej will disappear. As though maybe Inej isn’t really there.

It only takes a moment to cross the distance between them. Only when Inej is standing before her, still silent, does Nina slowly break into a smile.

“Inej,” she says, the name like light dawning upon her face. “It’s you.”

Around them, the crowd of the city moving past them, moving on.

 

Nina is not here alone. Of course she is not. There is a group of others with her at the old inn she takes Inej to, peering at the two of them curiously as Nina ushers them away. “We’re here on business,” Nina says, and she does not share the details, and Inej does not ask. Instead, she sits at the chair of Nina’s room and takes the cup of tea that is offered to her.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Nina says, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “The Wraith, striking fear into slavers’ hearts, everywhere. If they had hearts, that is. I never doubted if it was you. Of course it had to be.”

“Of course,” Inej says. “You understand.” They sit there for a moment, under the shared weight of that sentence, and then Inej says, careful, “I haven’t heard anything of you.”

“Of course,” Nina repeats back at her. “You wouldn’t have.” But her smile has softened into something wistful, and she leans back in her chair, folds her hands behind her head. “Someday, though, you will.”

The years look like they have been kind to Nina. She is older, of course, a little thinner, and there is a scar by her eye that she must have chosen to keep. Sometimes she goes a little quiet. But her cheeks are ruddy from the wind and when her laughter carries across the room Inej can almost believe they’re young again, the six of them running wild, briefly coming together to move the world.

And then the world kept moving.

“Oh, Inej,” Nina says. “Have you been well?”

Inej smiles. “I have been free,” she says.

More than that—she has a life of her own. A crew at her side, and a future before her, wide as the open sea. Time moving forward, straight as an arrow landing true. Until now. Inej clenches her hand tight around her cup of tea. Seeing Nina again has caught her off guard. The sweetness, but also the hurt of it, like the sting of warmth against her palm. She holds it there for as long as she can bear.

“Have you ever returned?” Nina says.

Inej falters. “To Ketterdam?” she says. “No.”

Nina takes the kettle, refills her own cup. “Will you?” she asks, but Inej is already there in her mind. The moment of the jump, rooftops gleaming in the moonlight, crooked streets glittering below, all reflecting back up at her like stars. The bite of wind against the back of her neck. _Inej, you’re slipping._

“Have you?” Inej says, in lieu of replying. “Returned, that is?”

Nina’s face darkens. “No,” she says. There is a shadow behind her eyes that Inej hasn’t seen in her since she was coming off the _parem_ : an absence defined by a fullness first received. “I couldn’t. Not after leaving like that.” She touches her wrists absently. “We buried him on the Fjerdan coast,” she says, like an afterthought. “Where he would have wanted.”

Inej nods. “No mourners,” she says.

It takes a moment. “No funerals,” says Nina.

It rings oddly hollow, after all these years. Inej regrets saying it. She would have thought that she had outgrown all the callous recklessness of her youth. She allows the echo of her words to pass, and then reaches across the table, takes Nina’s hand in hers.

Nina doesn’t startle at the touch. Just holds on just as tight.

“It’s been a long time,” Nina says, with a little laugh. “When I think of him—of all of us, then—I feel fond. We were so young, all of us. We didn’t know how much more there was, to come. But, you know—I can still remember it, exactly what it felt like, back then. The rush of it all. I don’t think I’ll ever forget.” A pause. “I’m glad I won’t.”

All the ghosts between them, flickering in the candlelight. Inej bites her lip. Surely she can speak one to life.

“Nina,” she says. The relief of her name, in her throat. “I think—I’m afraid of going back. When I’ve come this far.”

Nina is looking at her carefully. Something in Inej trembles, to be seen, again. But it isn’t from fear.

“It’s not going back, really,” Nina says, after a moment. Thoughtful. “Not anymore. It’s just going on.”

Inej closes her eyes. The streets of West Stave, the gilded bars of the cage. A figure watching from the quay, getting smaller and smaller in the distance. She takes her cup of tea and drinks all of it down.

“You’ll stay the night, won’t you,” Nina says. “And for breakfast.” It’s not a question, but Inej answers anyway.

“Of course,” she says. “When else will you show me the new drinking songs you’ve picked up over the years?”

Nina bursts into laughter. “Oh, Saints, no,” she says. “You’ve really asked for it, now.” Her voice gleaming gold in the lamplight, bright enough to keep.

 

In the morning Inej stands on the deck of her ship, before the bow. The shadow of it rising out of the waters. Nothing can touch her. Nothing but the past tugging at her hair. Drawing her—not backward, like she had believed, but straight ahead. Ever onward.

“Specht,” she says. “How many days is it, from here to Kerch?”

His smile is startled. “Five days, Captain,” he says. “But between you and me, I think we can make it in less.”

“Good,” Inej says, and in the waters below, her reflection shifts, and settles.

 

**v.**

 

One grey morning a shadow is docked at the Ketterdam harbour.

That is how the story begins.

 

The Slat is no longer the main base of operations for the Dregs; they outgrew it years ago, expanded into deeper, darker corners of the Barrel, but the rooms are still there for those who need them. A fire almost burned it down, once, but Kaz had it restored. He returns every once in a while to check on it. Force of habit, like thumbing for a bruise you know is still there.

He climbs up the flights of stairs, and feels every step in his bones. The echo of his cane against the wood like knocking on a door. Through the walls of the rooms he can hear movement, muffled chatter, the occasional laughter. The Slat is still alive, it would seem, though the floors creak and the steps sag under his weight. In the pale light of the lamps his shadow shifts against the wall as though unsure of itself. Deciding what form to take.

The door of the attic opens noiselessly despite the rust on the hinges. The window is open, curtains fluttering in the wind. He can hear rain outside. Beginnings of a storm. His old desk and chair sit untouched in the darkness, gathering dust.

“What business,” Kaz says. His voice is a rasp.

A shadow looks at him from the corner of the room. Dripping water onto the floor.

“Kaz Brekker,” she says.

Kaz’s hand tightens around the knob of his cane. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

“I didn’t know if I was.”

“What changed, then?”

“You told me once,” Inej says. She takes off her hood, and Kaz’s eyes follow her every movement, the swing of her braid, the light step of her feet, the way he might watch the flight of a bird across the sky. “Crows don’t forget. You were right.”

“Os Alta and Os Kervo,” Kaz says, hoarse. “And all that lies between. Weddle of Noyvi Zem, Elling and Djerholm, Ahrat Jen and Bhez Ju. Shriftport and Cofton and all the other inner cities of Eames Chin. All the way to Leflin in the Wandering Isle. And now—now, have you come at last for Ketterdam, too?”

Inej takes a step forward. Eyes glittering in the dark. “I came for you,” she says.

Another step, and Kaz sees the moment she sees that he isn’t wearing his gloves. A hitch in her breath.

“All this time?” she says.

Kaz shakes his head. “No,” he admits. “Not for a long while. And not even now, a lot of the time.”

“What changed, then,” Inej says back at him. The tilt of her head, curious.

Kaz thinks about it. A knife wound. A fall of flower petals on his desk. A face in the water, sinking under. “You told me once,” he says. “You don’t ask for forgiveness. You earn it.”

“And how do you do that?” Inej says. Her voice a whisper.

He looks at her. “By being more,” he says. More than the scared little boy half-drowning in the sickness of the harbour. More than just another boss of the Barrel. More, even, than a story, if he can find it in himself to return to the body he’d once tried to leave behind.

She takes one of his hands. He lets her. She runs her cold fingers over his palm, the marks where his own nails have dug into his skin. It’s hard, but not unbearably so. She is looking down at his hand, but he is caught by her face, still slick with rain. The sweep of her chin, line of her brow. The shadows of her lashes falling against her cheeks. He sways, imperceptibly, closer. She flicks her gaze up at him, catching him out. Thief in the act.

He can feel the pulse of her wrist against his fingers. Burst of blood under rotting skin. Or life. He closes his eyes. Life.

The hush of her breath, against his face. It has been so long, but his body still remembers how to move around her. A history between them carved by space. What would it feel like now, he thinks, to bridge that gap, and he leans minutely forward.

Inej’s eyes are on him, dark. Mouth wet.

A flash of lightning whites out the room, illuminating them in perfect light, and then returning them to the darkness once more.

In that negative space of blackness, Kaz tastes Kerch rain on her lips.

A thousand images flash through his mind—sick water stained green, shadows of the lamps flickering with the sway of a ship, a spray of lights over the harbour—then quiets, once more.

He draws away, and her head dips forward for a moment, chasing the space he has left behind, before she straightens back up, watches him carefully. “Kaz,” Inej says.

“It’s fine,” he says.

“Kaz,” Inej says, again. “Say it. You have to say it.”

Her ragged braid, drenched wet and coming undone. Her face, filled out over the years, chin sharp, throat bared. She will not ask again.

“Stay,” Kaz rasps, the word wrenched from deep in his chest. The burn of it in his mouth like nerve damage, alighting through his body to the tips of his fingers.

Inej, still looking up at him. Slowly, she smiles.

Her hand on his. Neither of them have let go.

The curtains flutter on the open window, letting in the rain. 

  


End file.
